


I'll Crown You With Camellias

by Fweeble



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Hide the ghost, M/M, Unbeta'd, Unrequited Love, off screen character death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2412077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a ghost in Kaneki’s house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Crown You With Camellias

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm in the Halloween spirit, so have some early cheer! Ghost!Hide and a spoonful of angst to bring some holiday spirit~ 8)
> 
> Camellia: Love and devotion.

It is an uphill hike from the bus station to his new house. It is surrounded by unruly plant life; large, looming trees hide the sky with their thick boughs and dense leaves, ferns sprout from the moist earth, unfurl and spread, moss and lichen line the entire path to the front door. Everything, as far as Kaneki can see, is green.   
  
There are no neighbors for half an hour by foot, fifteen by bike, but Kaneki sees the abandoned skeletons of once-houses in the sea of green.   
  
They got the house cheap, an almost literal steal, and his mother smiles at him and tells him they are so lucky. With money as tight as it is, they would be lucky to even find a one room apartment with a tiny kitchenette in Tokyo and yet here there are, with a glorious traditional house large enough to comfortably fit two families of four. And it’s all theirs.   
  
She doesn’t talk about how the realtor had insisted they not visit the house until after the purchase or how the townspeople whisper every day when they make their trip into town. She doesn’t talk about how, when she falls asleep in the living room with scissors and and flowers in hand, she wakes up comfortable in her futon, blankets pulled to her chin and flowers perfectly trimmed and tidily tucked into their appropriate boxes. Neither of them talk about the piping hot tea they always find on the dining table when they return home.   
  
Kaneki doesn’t talk about the blond boy who sometimes sits in the corner of the room and smiles at him. Sometimes the boy helps him with his homework, hovers over his shoulder, and whispers English grammar and vocabulary into his ears. His mother no longer needs to quiz him because the occasionally transparent boy will happily do it.  
  
No one talks about how Kaneki’s house is haunted.  
  
But they whisper it.  
  
The middle aged mothers in the supermarket gossip about the mother and son that have recently moved into the haunted house on the hill. They talk about the murder, the entire family dead, the poor, poor boy, and the blood drenched walls. Oh the horror, they titter, so ghastly. And now there are new people living there, after two years. How long will this family last? The last one didn’t last two months.  
  
How sad, they sigh. How unfortunate that these poor people have ended up with such a cursed house. Hopefully nothing ill will befall them.   
  
Kaneki doesn’t feel unfortunate or unlucky.  
  
His father may be dead, but he has his mother. And his mother is his greatest joy; she is his treasure. She is kind and hardworking and she loves him and he loves her, so if anything, he is both lucky and blessed. They have a house and every night Kaneki has a warm meal before his mother leaves for her second shift.   
  
Long after the sun has set and the moon has taken its place, his mother still at work and away from home, Kaneki still isn’t alone because Hide, the strange blond boy who has lived in his house for far longer than he has, is there. It’s like having a prolonged sleepover, one that never ends. It’s nice –Kaneki has never had a friend before moving. He likes it.   
  
He does hate how Hide often disappears, midsentence, mid laugh.  
  
There is never any evidence that the other boy had been there, not even a wrinkle in the blankets he had sat on.   
  
It makes him realize how lonely he feels. How alone he is in this large, empty house, the lone occupant, the lone soul. How lonely he feels each time his mother walks out that door and into the night. How he always hopes she’ll turn back and stay with him.  
  
Kaneki wakes up one night to the pitter patter of rain and Hide looking out the window and there is something in the blond’s gaze that makes the boy’s heart hurt. The teen doesn’t look lonely, Kaneki thinks. He looks abandoned. And Kaneki cannot imagine why anyone would do that. The other boy is always so calm and patient with him when the blond teaches him his multiplication and division, always so proud of him when he learns another word. Hide is the nicest person Kaneki knows besides his mother and it upsets Kaneki to think that Hide sits by the window every night waiting for something or someone.  
  
Whatever or whoever the spirit waits for never comes and Hide continues to spend the nights illuminated by the moon’s glow. Kaneki lays with his back facing the window most nights, imagining of the forlorn, yearning look that Hide only wears when he thinks Kaneki is asleep.  
  
\--  
  
Kaneki has lived at his house for five years and the town is finally starting to quiet down. The novelty of Kaneki and his mother living in the infamous haunted house quickly loses its shine after the fifth anniversary of their moving rolls around. Perhaps all the ghost sightings were just the overactive imaginations of the previous tenants; perhaps it was the product of insufficient sleep.   
  
Still, no one dares to visit.  
  
The students in school still give Kaneki a wide berth but they stop avoiding his gaze, no longer afraid of being cursed should their eyes meet Kaneki’s. Now, the PE teacher doesn’t hesitate to treat him like every other student and Kaneki is run ragged, lungs burning, after every class. His science teacher no longer looks skittish when he hands Kaneki his exams and his literature and math teachers’ smiles when they congratulate him look more relaxed, genuine.   
  
Slowly, his life is changing. He is beginning to find a place in this town, five years after he had moved to this place so far away from Tokyo, so removed from his old life, his old home, his past.   
  
Even if every other facet of his life is changing, there are two things that don’t. His mother continues to work her double shifts and, in the evenings before her night shift begins, she still makes dinner and does the little odd jobs she picks up –trimming flowers, making little hair ornaments, stuffing envelopes. Every month, she sends a check to her sister in Tokyo, the sister who continues to call most nights crying into the phone with talses of financial difficulty and strained family relations. His mother continues to smile as the crow’s feet by her eyes grow deeper and deeper; the worrying dark rings become more and more prominent.   
  
The other thing is Hide.  
  
Even as Kaneki grows taller and his mother’s hair becomes increasingly peppered with grey, Hide doesn’t change. His hair is still a tangled nest of gold, his eyes still crinkle at the edges when he smiles, his laugh still just as sudden and loud. He still looks at Kaneki with fond eyes and still makes loud demands for new CDs and songs to while away his time when he’s alone in the house. Hide still helps Kaneki with his homework –or tries to, as the blond admits he hadn’t even managed to graduate high school and it has been close to twenty years since then.   
  
Hide still stays by the window when Kaneki goes to bed, stares out the window, waiting. Willing for someone to return.  
  
_If they haven’t returned by now_ , Kaneki wants to say,  _they won’t return ever. So stop. Stop waiting for them. Stop missing them. I’m here, Hide._  
  
_I’m here for you._  
  
Sometimes, Kaneki feels like he is the ghost, the invisible apparition, in their relationship.   
  
Sometimes, Hide will look at Kaneki with a sad smile and say, “You remind me of someone I used to know.” The older boy will never continue, will always look equal parts wistful and pained before changing the subject and Kaneki never feels more alone than whenever Hide looks away from him and thinks of someone else, this person that Kaneki reminds Hide of. This person who Kaneki does not know, this person who knows the Hide who was still alive, the Hide that Kaneki doesn’t know.  
  
And it is an ugly, petty thing that grows in Kaneki, a selfish creature that hates this nameless phantom that haunts his only friend. He hates this shadow, hates them for having something Kaneki can never have, for being so irreplaceable that even years after his death, Hide’s thoughts are still filled with them.  
  
_Watch me. Look at me.  
  
Forget them._  
  
Kaneki is the one who returns to Hide every night, the one who will never abandon the other boy.  
  
So Hide should only look at Kaneki, should only think of Kaneki.  
  
\--  
  
One night, he wakes with a start. His blankets are a sticky tangle around his legs, a dark spot forming over the front of his pajamas, shame coursing through his veins.   
  
Hide is by his side, whispering reassuring words, and Kaneki knows that if Hide had a corporeal form, he would be able to feel the blond’s fingers combing through his hair. “Don’t worry man, this happens to everyone. You’re at that age, it’s bound to happen. Get up and take a shower, get that gunk washed off you. I’ll get these in the wash and get some fresh blankets out.”  
  
“No, no. I’ll do it when I get out.” It always exhausts Hide, the little feats of sheer will that allows the ghost to touch things, to move them. Hide often fades out afterwards and often goes missing for days. It feels like the time during the disappearances are longer now, and Kaneki can still remember the frantic terror that surged through him the day he realized Hide had been missing for a week, something that had never happened before.   
  
One day, it won’t be Hide waiting for someone who never returns. It’ll be Kaneki.  
  
He won’t let that happen.  
  
“It’s late and you have school tomorrow, I can do a little washing and freshening up. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”  
  
“It’s fine, Hide.” Kaneki fails to bite back a yawn as he pulls out a change of clothes from his closet. “Touch anything in my room and I won’t put any music on when I leave for school tomorrow.”  
  
“I’m a big boy. I can turn on my own music.”  
  
“I’ll take my mp3 player and CDs with me.”  
  
“Stiiiiiiiiiingy.”  
  
Kaneki slips into the shower, tries to wash the burn of humiliation from his body. Images flash through his mind –long sun bronzed limbs, familiar brown eyes looking up at him, the familiar timbre of Hide’s voice catching, of moans that make heat curl in places Kaneki never experienced before. He sees swollen, kiss-bitten lips when he closes his eyes, dark bruises across all the secret parts of Hide, places he has never seen before. Places no one else should ever see, only Kaneki.  
  
He stares in disgust at his hands, hoses down the last signs of his crime, watches as it swirls down the drain.  
  
He is the worst.  
  
Hide has returned to his place by the window when Kaneki comes out of the bathroom and although the stained blankets are still in the room, they are lying on the floor, clean blankets haphazardly thrown across the futon. The door to his closet is ajar. “Sorry, I lost some steam near the end.”  
  
“I’m taking my mp3 player with me tomorrow.”  
  
“Go to bed, Kaneki.”  
  
Kaneki bundles up his shame, throws it into the wash, and returns to his room. He feels the familiar wave of envy and anger well up at the sight of Hide staring out the window.   
  
“Did you ever love someone?” He doesn’t mean to blurt out the words, but he feels emboldened once they leave his mouth. “Did you ever fall in love?”  
  
The ghost looks startled and for the first time, Kaneki sees what the ghost looks like flushed. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” The boy looks embarrassed, glances out the window once again. “I fell in love when I was eight. It was love at first sight. Funny, huh?”  
  
It burns, that feeling of resentment, bitterness.   
  
“What were they like?”  
  
Hide smiles. “Go to sleep, Kaneki. Now is not the time to talk about these things.”  
  
This is not a battle he will win so Kaneki relents, crawls under his fresh blankets and turns onto his side, away from Hide and his window and his moon and his world beyond, his life that has nothing to do with Kaneki.   
  
“So it’s that time for you, huh. I hope it turns out better for you than it did for me,” Kaneki hears before sleep takes hold of him.   
  
\--  
  
Kaneki picks up a part time job despite his mother’s protests when he begins high school. His mother looks increasingly exhausted, the pallor of her skin an unhealthy shade of white to rival bleached bone. She’s dying, he realizes. He is watching his mother die.  
  
“Stop this,” he pleads. “You’re working too hard.”  
  
“Ken,” his mother caresses his cheek gently with the calm and acceptance bodhisattva. “Rather than a person who hurts others, it is better to be the one who is hurt. Remember?”  
  
Why is it then, that his aunt isn’t the one who hurts for her sister.   
  
“I understand. So I am going to take that job down at the supermarket.”  
  
“Ken…”  
  
“I promise my grades won’t drop and I’ve already got permission to have two weeks off for exams.”  
  
“You’re still a child, Ken. School is your job.”  
  
“I’m trying to live right by you, mother.”  
  
_Whatever hardships I have to endure, I will. So don’t go anywhere,_ he begs.  
  
Kaneki works seven hour shifts on the weekends, four hour shifts on the weekdays, and Kaneki knows what everyone thinks of when they see him is pity. They realize it too; his mother is on her way to an early grave. The customers strain themselves with fake smiles, overexert themselves with empty conversations. Poor boy, he can hear them thinking. Poor boy.  
  
He returns home after work, cleans up the house, tries to help get dinner jumpstarted for his mother. He follows the instructions for the meal that night, washes vegetables and chops vegetables without experience or finesse. With unsure hands, he tosses murdered vegetables into pans and pots, tries to figure out the key to edible food until his mother returns and takes over. Somehow, she always rescues his failures –soggy potato salad is reinvented as extra flavorful mashed potatoes, hard beef steak is given new life as beef stew.   
  
At night, he pores over his homework. He studies until he finds himself in bed, the morning sun shining, with no memory of how he got from the desk to the futon.   
  
He doesn’t see Hide much, anymore, just the faint traces of him. The steaming cups of tea have once again made their appearances. Sometimes, a pot he forgot to bring to boil is already boiling when he goes to check on it. The onions are always diced and prepared for him before he gets to it.   
  
Kaneki misses him, misses the late night conversations he used to have with the blond; the afternoons spent basking in the dying sunlight as Kaneki reads to the ghost books from his father’s collection. He misses the smile that would always greet him when he opened his front door after a long day away from home. He misses Hide and the way the spirit always made him feel.  
  
On the night of a furious thunderstorm, Kaneki wakes up to see Hide for the first time in months, moonlight caught in his hair.   
  
_I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you._  
  
With everything he is, Kaneki wishes he could reach out and touch Hide.  
  
\--  
  
Kaneki’s mother falls with the cherry blossoms in the spring of his senior year and she doesn’t get back up.  
  
The night of her passing, Kaneki wakes to Hide shouting.  
  
“Kaneki,  _Kaneki_! Wake up!  _Wake up_! I don’t think your mother is breathing!  _Wake up!_ ”  
  
His mother falls asleep and doesn’t wake up one night, hunched over her worktable,  white carnations in her hands.   
  
The funeral is a somber affair with the majority of the townspeople attending. What a hard worker, they say. So diligent. So strong, she raised her son all by herself. Truly a remarkable woman.  
  
He sits in silence, the chief mourner, and finds he has no tears to shed while his aunt beside him cries crocodile tears of sorrow.   
  
He is seventeen.  
  
The arbiter arrives at his doorstep a week after the funeral. His aunt has stayed in his house since the funeral, Hide nowhere to be seen.   
  
“Your mother has left everything to you, Kaneki-san. She did not have much in savings, however, and after subtracting inheritance taxes there won’t be much left.”  
  
“So I won’t be able to stay here.” Even though the rent is cheap, he won’t be able to pay for school tuition and utilities  _and_  rent.    
  
“It’s no problem,” his aunt cuts in. “You can stay with me. It’s the least I can do. I owe your mother so much more.”  
  
“The owner of your house has waived all rent and will pay for the utilities until you finish your studies.”  
  
“We can’t allow that. How could we accept such charity from a complete stranger? No, Ken-kun will be coming home with me.”  
  
Kaneki sees Hide standing in the doorway. The ghost looks shocked at the mention of the owner of the house and he is wearing the face Kaneki only sees when Hide thinks no one is watching. The look of wanting and yearning.  
  
“No. I’ll be staying here,” he tells his aunt. “This is my last year and then I'll graduate. I don’t see the point in moving now.” He turns to the man and smiles politely. “Please tell the owner I appreciate his graciousness. I'l be moving out after graduation and I'll reimburse him for everything as soon as I can.”  
  
“Ken-kun…”  
  
“I’ve decided.”  
  
Hide doesn’t see him, his gaze locked on some horizon beyond the walls of the room, but Kaneki sees Hide.  
  
\--  
  
“Do you know the owner of the house?”  
  
“Yeah, I do.” Hide rolls onto his stomach, gazes down at Kaneki. “He’s my best friend.”  
  
“So this wasn’t your house.”  
  
“Nope, not at all.”  
  
“What kind of person is your best friend?”  
  
Hide looks thoughtful. “A quiet guy with wire rimmed glasses. An awkward person who cares a lot but doesn’t know how to express it.” The ghost looks so content as he speaks of this stranger, so at peace. “He loved people so much but he was a bit dense when it came to showing his emotions. People didn’t get along with him very well.”  
  
“And this… this is the person I remind you of?”  
  
“Yup! You two are kind of similar. I can’t really put my finger on it sometimes.” Hide beams. “Although the two of you also share the same birthday. That’s really cool, huh?”  
  
“What’s his name?”  
  
“Arima. Arima Kishou.”  
  
Kaneki tests the name in his mind, considers it.  
  
He finally knows the name of the person Hide waits for.   
  
\--  
  
He has never wondered about the house he lived in, has never sought to learn more about it.  
  
He had always assumed the house was Hide’s. That the boy had died in the bloody murder the townspeople used to talk about.   
  
The local library holds old newspaper articles and Kaneki finds his house’s sordid past among its archives. ‘Heinous Triple Murder Rocks the Town,’ the title reads. A couple and a young teen were found murdered in the Arima estate, the couple’s teenage son had found them. The son had descended the hill to the town convenience store for ice cream when the perpetrator slipped in. Jewelry were stolen but the police had decided it was to throw the investigators off the right track.   
  
The Arimas, famous spiritualists, had been invited into an open investigation on a serial murderer. It was the day before the séance that they were killed. Surely it was a countermeasure, a way to ensure their silence.  
  
Kaneki feels cold for the rest of the day. He slides open the front door to see Hide smiling and waiting for him, like always, and feels nothing but horror over the truths he had unearthed.  
  
“Why…”   
  
“What is it, Kaneki?” Hide asks, hovering close.  
  
Kaneki wets his lips, asks, “Tell me. Tell me more… Tell me about…”  
  
“Oh. So you finally looked everything up, huh. I knew it’d happen one day.” The blond wanders further into the house, crosses his legs and sits, floating by the living room table. “This place is special, you know. There are mystical energies or something here. It’s why the Arima clan had decided to settle here in the first place. People usually don’t see ghosts like me but whatever it is about this place… it helps people with latent spiritual talent to see me.” The ghost looks down across the table at Kaneki and grins wryly. “Your mother could never see me, you know. You’re the only person besides Kishou who has been able to hear me.  
  
“Kishou didn’t move out after… Kishou didn’t move. And I stayed with him.”  
  
“But he left. Why did he leave?”  
  
Hide looks down at the table. “He said there was something he needed to find and he wouldn’t find it in this tiny town. He went to a university in Tokyo.”  
  
“He hasn’t returned? Not even once?”  
  
The ghost looks up and beams at Kaneki. “When Kishou finds what he’s looking for, he’ll come back. I’ll wait for him until he does.”  
  
Kaneki hates Arima Kishou.  
  
\--  
  
Spring is approaching once again and with it, graduation.  
  
Kaneki has a scholarship for Kamii University and Hide laments that Kaneki chooses to go there over Tokyo University when the prestigious college has also agreed to accept him.   
  
He packs his things slowly and over time, piles up cardboard boxes like children’s building blocks and prepares.   
  
_Come with me_ , he quietly begs.  _Come with me to Tokyo. Arima isn’t coming back for you. Come with me.  
_  
The ghost chatters happily while Kaneki packs even as the melancholy grows in chestnut eyes. Hide bounces around the house, sings and laughs and makes merry.  
  
It is two days after graduation when the front door opens and a man Kaneki doesn’t know stands in the doorway.  
  
He is tall, with white, white hair and glasses perched on a long, straight nose. Everything about him is white; immaculate dress shoes, pressed, starched dress pants, long, flowing trench coat.  
  
“Kishou!” Hide gasps. “You’re back!”  
  
And Kaneki can only watch on as dread pools deep in his gut, watch as the spirit gushes and flies and spins and twirls around the solemn man with such delight.  
  
“Nagachika, why are you still here. You should have moved on like I told you to.”  
  
“I told you I’d wait for you, Kishou. Did you find what you were looking for?”  
  
Arima puts down the suitcase Kaneki had never noticed him holding and hugs the blond. “Yes, I did.” Gloved hands run through thick golden hair and Kaneki feels the burn of resentment. This man, who is blessed by his lineage, can touch Hide when he cannot. For this man, Hide cries tears of joy. “I found that man and I made sure he paid for what he did to you.”  
  
“You came back. You came back for me,” Hide cries.  
  
“Of course,” Arima assures. His hands still and the man pulls off his gloves. “So you can rest now, Nagachika.” Bare fingers tap Hide on the forehead and like that, the ghost flickers out of existence, a snuffed flame.  
  
“May you rest in peace, lost spirit.”  
  
It takes several stuttered heartbeats later for Kaneki to realize what happened, to process the scene that had just transpired before him.  
  
“How dare you!” He screams. Rage washes through him and he throws himself at the other man. “How dare you! He waited for you! For years and years and years, he waited for you! He thought only of you!  _He loved you!_ ” And it stings, the truth. Hide had only loved Arima all these years, only this man.   
  
“How could you!” He raises balled fists, intends to bring them down on this callous man, to bring retribution and vindication for his broken heart, for Hide who he has lost. “ _How could you_.”  
  
The man stops his assault easily, grips Kaneki’s wrists easily in large, strong hands. “Kaneki-san, I must insist you stop. Not only am I the owner of this house but I am a police officer. I will arrest you if you do not desist.”  
  
“Why,” Kaneki sobs. “Why did you come now?”  
  
_I wanted him to come with me._    
  
If Arima had only come after they had left, Hide would still be here.  
  
“I came because it was time. I came because I knew he was still waiting.”  
  
\--  
  
Kaneki wakes too early, the sun just beginning its ascent into the sky.  
  
He makes his way to the kitchen for breakfast and hears Arima’s voice coming from the entranceway.   
  
Turning the corner, Kaneki sees the man alone, head bowed, where Hide last stood.   
  
“Why did you stay, you fool. You must have known, you must have felt it –you wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Were you willing to burn away your very soul just to wait for me? You were so foolish, always so, so foolish.”  
  
In the sun’s faint light, Kaneki can see the delicate reflections of water droplets on the wood floor.   
  
“I have avenged your death and my parents’ deaths. I have sent you to heaven myself, so please.  
  
“Wait for me as you always have, Hideyoshi. It will be a while, but I’ll return to you one day.”  
  
  



End file.
